More About Jordan

Rubylyn Canda knew almost immediately that she was in over
her head. Days after her arrival in Jordan from her native Philippines, the employment
recruitment agency that placed her with a family in Jordan dropped a bombshell
on her.

Rubylyn Canda of the Philippines fled a housekeeping job arranged through an unscrupulous hiring agency 5 months after her arrival in Jordan. Adaleh Center for Human Rights Studies, CRS' partner in Amman, provided legal counsel and resolved her case. Photo by David Snyder for CRS

Sent after 1 month to work for an Iraqi family in Amman and
informed that she would be responsible for cleaning only one house as part of
her contract, Rubylyn soon found herself a prisoner to an impossible workload.

"I was told to clean their office, the house of their
niece and the house of their son, as well as their house," she says of her
new employer family. "That's four houses, but they never told me I would
be cleaning so many houses."

With no room of her own, Rubylyn was forced to sleep on the
living room floor. After 5 months in Jordan, she fled her abusive employers for
the safety of a Filipino friend—officially breaking the law and leaving her
passport behind.

Unfortunately, such cases are not at all uncommon in Jordan,
where an estimated 300,000 foreign migrant workers are legally employed, and 300,000
more are thought to be living and working illegally. Many are from Asia,
arriving without Arabic language skills. They also have little understanding of
their rights, which frequently are limited in a Jordanian legal system where foreign
migrant workers—penniless and poorly represented—find themselves facing
daunting legal hurdles.

Dogged Advocates

To give them a voice, Catholic Relief Services helped partner
Adaleh Center for Human Rights Studies set up a unit in 2010 to provide legal
support to foreign migrant workers. By assigning lawyers on staff at Adaleh to
individual migrant cases, the center had a remarkable effect in its first full
year of operation: It resolved 70 percent of the 390 cases it took on in 2010
alone.

The legal unit CRS helped establish at the Adaleh Center for Human Rights Studies is working to protect migrant workers' rights in Jordan, says Luna Sabbah, the center's executive director. Photo by David Snyder for CRS

In 2011, says Luna Sabbah, executive director of the Adaleh
Center, they have built on the contacts made earlier and have further
strengthened their established reputation as a hard-nosed advocate for migrant
workers in Jordan.

"People know us more now, so we are becoming stronger,"
she says. "With CRS' support, we were able to add more lawyers and take
more cases, so we are having more impact."

Living illegally in Jordan after fleeing her abusive
employers, Rubylyn was desperate for help. She approached the Philippines embassy,
a Jordanian human rights center and a rights-based nongovernmental organization
with her case. But, she was unable to either clear the trumped-up legal charge
against her or get her passport back from the recruitment agency that had exploited
her from the outset. When she heard about the Adaleh Center, she was quick to
plead her case—and amazed by the response.

"At the center, there was action right away," Rubylyn
says. "They called the agency right away to try to get my passport back,
and they called me every day to tell me what was going on."

Eventually, lawyers at the center retrieved her passport and
had her case dismissed by her former employer. Rubylyn was then able to work
legally in Jordan for the first time in years. More important, she says, she
can now leave the country, and plans to visit her two teenaged children in the
Philippines for the first time since she left them to find work in 2006.

Her experience in Jordan, Rubylyn says, has taught her a
valuable lesson.

"Now I realize that being with your family is more
important than earning money," she says. "Family is first."